What Did the KKK Really Want?

What Did the Ku Klux Klan Really Want?

The KKK started off in 1866 as a group of 6 young men who wanted to form a club. This club was not meant to be the evil we perceive as the Ku Klux Klan, but more so just to have fun play jokes on each other, however just 2 years later there were many other chapters of this group that branched off to be the sinister, racially charged Klansmen who caused terror, beatings, and bloodshed; primarily in the South.

The Klan operated under the incorrect assumption that they were good hard working men who sought to protect their neighborhoods, wives, and children from the “great crime” of blacks trying to assimilate into southern society. Although the Klan used self-defense as a premise for their existence as the Klan, their actions proved otherwise. These men were against equality and wanted things to go back to how they were during the “old south” era. Education was not something that the KKK wanted available for black students, so there were many schools burned down to the ground, and teachers whipped or killed for teaching black students, because as they saw it “each student meant one less laborer.” The planters wanted the x-slaves back in the fields and so they supported the KKK and would go to them to use force on the blacks who didn’t work as hard as they though they should.

The Klansmen did not wear the white robes that we would imagine them to wear; back in those days their robes were different colors and designs, nicely sewed together, by their wives and other women who supported these men in their cause for hatred. Their horses also wore hoods which made the Klansman look even more menacing.

Not only did the KKK not want blacks to have any freedoms, including dressing well and not stepping to the side on the sidewalk to let a white person pass, they also were dead set against free blacks at the polls on election day and holding any political office in the U.S. There was an occurrence with a man named Jack Dupree, who was president of the Republican Club in Mississippi, who would speak freely about what was on his mind, and was brutally murdered in front of his wife, so brutal in fact, that his throat was slit and he was disemboweled.  The Klan was so violent, that they had control over political elections between 1868 and 1871. There were so many murders that some Republican’s referred to them as “southern murderers.” No matter how many murders happened at the hands of the KKK, it was difficult to prove and arrest them, possibly because of their robes and hoods allowed them to be anonymous,   but also because the authorities would not arrest or convict a white man of murder if he killed blacks.

These are the actions of the KKK, definitely NOT a peaceful group of hard working men trying to protect their families and communities from danger and threats of black robbers and rapists, by a brotherhood of good men, no; not these men. The KKK was definitely a brotherhood, and still exists to this day, however they are a brotherhood of racially charged ignorance, close minded in nature and evil to their bones.

1: Why did the government and officials allow the KKK to get away with these murders and other terroristic acts against the people?

2: How do you think the black people stayed encouraged to continue to try and reach racial equality in the Southern states?

3: Why do you think there was not more of an uprising against the KKK?  A major part of the population in the south was blacks, so why didn’t they fight back?

4: Do you think any of these Klansman ever felt any kind of regret for their actions? How can a society be so coldhearted and not feel any confliction in what they are doing, especially when it is causing extreme terror and death?